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Kiba doesn't expect him to make an appearance so quickly.
The responsibilities that someone like Naruto is ladled with, after all, are a little magnanimous in comparison to those of everyone else in their age group, have been especially in the last few years. They’ve learned to live with the prolonged absences and escapes to libraries and advisory meetings, so long as he treats them to late night drinks on occasion. Ino and Shikamaru share in the burden of such duties, too, and it’s a joke they all share as the years go by and they grow older.
At present, Kurenai offers her middle student an amused look as he passes by, and Kiba valiantly tries but fails to stifle a burgeoning smile. Naruto's eagerness in regards to all things concerning his teammate is an easily laughable thing. He’s a little silly when in love, all over the place emotionally and so intent to please.
It’s a good look on him, happier than ones he’s worn in years past.
"He arrives," Kiba says, all grandiose, opening the door wide to a restless and pacing blond of twenty one. Naruto has one hand on his neck and the other in his pocket, and his feet trace and retrace a short stretch of dirt across Kurenai’s porch. He looks up at Kiba anxiously, worry written into every crinkle around his eyes.
The smile that once pulled at Kiba’s lips now threatens to tear into a laugh, and he says by way of greeting, “You go see her first. We’ll catch up later.”
Belatedly, when Naruto’s brow furrows, he adds, “It’s not bad, I promise.” He idly waves a hand in the open door's direction, and Kurenai reaffirms the statement from a ways behind him, where Mirai clings shyly onto her leg.
“We’ve all been taking very good care of her, haven’t we?” she says affectionately, ruffling her daughter’s hair. Naruto squats down to the toddler’s level and smiles, holding a hand out to her.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, and she answers with a quiet mumble, hiding a little further behind her mother’s figure. She’s a normally rambunctious child, but Naruto also happens to be someone with an intimidating reputation, what with all of the stories her aunts and uncles like to tell. He laughs and gently presses a hand to her face, then vaults back up to a standing position before heading to a bedroom in the back.
The sight that greets him there launches his heart into his throat.
"Hey," he whispers, a shadow settling over his face as he walks inside. Hinata barely pulls her head up from the stack of pillows underneath it, eyelids shuttering as she takes in his presence. The pallor of her face is awful, the color in her cheeks drained. Heavy stamps of lavender rest under her eyes.
Anyone with sense can tell that it’s worse than “not bad”; that other euphemisms like it and the smiles from everyone in the house are an attempt to buoy a situation that would otherwise feel suffocating.
"You're back," Hinata croaks, barely shifting under the covers. A stool once occupied by Shino rests empty for him to take, and he pulls himself to her bedside. When her hand slips out for him to take, he grasps it fiercely, willing the warmth from his body to channel into hers. Everything about her feels cold, paper-thin, shrunk down to size.
He isn’t sure if he can dare to broach the topic in explicit words.
"Sakura couldn't do anything about this?" he asks instead, eyes roving over her blanketed figure, then around the room. There’s a bucket off to the side of where he sits, washed clean for now but likely filled with vomit before. Another bucket of fresh cloths is set aside at the foot of the bed, and his gaze zeroes in on watered down blood stains marking the sheets.
Hinata just manages a small shift of her head. "Only a little," she answers.
Naruto frowns, unsatisfied.
The unavoidable limitations on their modes of healing have never been more apparent than in moments like this. There’s a heavy focus on reparation of wounds, of closing up skin and bone where it’s been rendered near-irreparable, or extracting deadly poisons from the body before they can take serious effect.
No one talks about how to treat illness and disease due to circumstances otherwise, let alone complications like this. The expectation is to persevere enough and survive to where holding your own in the world as a combatant is feasible. No one cares if a person dies because their body can’t handle the simple strain of living, because sometimes the immune system gives up and backfires.
The collateral damage of their conflicts is sometimes so large and so vivid that Naruto forgets about the little things, about how a fever or internal blood loss can control a person as much as an injured limb given the right circumstances.
He strokes a thumb along Hinata's hairline, and a heavy sense of responsibility settles into him, followed by fear. Kiba never bothered to tell him who else knows, and Hiashi, though far removed from his elder daughter’s vicinity, has his ways of knowing how every minute of her life progresses nonetheless. An urgency wells up in Naruto’s chest at the thought.
"I’m staying the night," he says suddenly, and Hinata's eyes stretch wide.
"No, you can't—" she begins, but the protest cuts into a surprised yelp when he moves over her to join her under the covers. Even though the door to her bedroom stands more than ajar, he envelops her tightly in his arms, body coming aglow with endless stores of chakra. The warmth and energy flows all over her like a balm, and he notices that she involuntarily tucks herself into his chest. "Naruto-kun, what—" she whispers.
"We should get married."
They're the last words she expects from a conversation like this.
"What?" Hinata echoes, breath nearly having left her.
Naruto cups the side of her face with his right hand, a bandaged thumb running along the width of her cheek. His brow furrows as he looks at her, and he shuts his eyes, pained by the absence of warmth and color that he’s so used to. Her skin heats up slowly under his touch, Kurama bending to him and pouring out excess reserves.
"So I can take care of you," he says, and it comes out almost petulant if not overwhelmingly resolute. The simplicity of the endeavor and its purpose feels right and true, feels like something he’s been building himself up towards wanting to invest in another person his whole life.
He only has a small apartment to his name, and he’s not an expert at managing his finances, but he knows that he loves her. He knows that the sight of her drained and shivering brought him to his knees inside his heart, made him want to hold her for ages and not let go until the fracture in her mended whole.
"I—" Hinata starts, voice cracking. Tears build up in her eyes that he feels slip into the dip of his neck as she shelters there, and he tangles his fingers in her hair, presses a kiss to the top of her head as she starts to cry. “I—”
“You don’t have to say anything right now,” he murmurs. “I just want you to know."
He notices Kiba in the doorway out of the corner of his eye, and the jonin stands there, lips so far downturned that Naruto can tell he's on the verge of crying. This whole team, a bunch of secret crybabies. The thought almost makes Naruto smile despite the sadness of it all. They're a tender group with each other, have been since they were children and Hinata came under the other boys' care. Shino is away currently on a reconnaissance mission, but Naruto knows from the letter he received when he was in Kirigakure that the first few nights, it was no one else but Shino and Sakura toiling away at her side.
“I’m okay here,” he says quietly to Kiba, a little in response to when they first met at the door. He can tell that her teammate is reluctant to step back, would stand here and wait for hours and hours if it meant watching her come back to the world of the living. But the scales have also tipped a bit, Naruto thinks; not quite out of her lifelong team’s favor, but certainly a little more in favor of his own. “I’ve got her,” he addends, looking Kiba in the eye.
Hinata’s shudders in his arms have gone still, and she lays there, asleep in the curve of his body. Naruto settles back onto the pillows and draws the comforters better around them, and Kiba finally slips from view, the door falling shut behind him. There’s darkness that envelops the room, but a sliver of moonlight, too, one that sheds light on her skin as some small blush of color returns to it.
Something still wells in the bottom of Naruto’s throat, but he tucks her hair aside and nestles in close. Some worries are for today, others for tomorrow. All he knows right now is what he has in the present.
I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.